Sunshine in the Darkness
by Thumbtax
Summary: What happened to Sunshine Goodness during the mysterious lost months between her recall and her return? A Foodfight! fanfiction. (Pretty much abandoned, sorry. There's only so long you can care about Foodfight!)
1. Sunset

All characters are the property of their respective owners (presumably, at this point, a collection agency of some sort).

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This fic is dedicated, in loving memory, to a perfectly good bag of potato chips. Never eaten. Never enjoyed. _Never forget._

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I walked through the meadow, feeling the sun on my face and the tickle of the blades of grass on my bare feet. It wasn't the real sun, I knew that. If I concentrated-if I looked very hard out of the corner of my eye-I thought I could catch a glimpse of the reality behind it, the heartless flourescent lights and acoustic tile that made up the ceiling. Or maybe the sun is the reality, and the dull white box full of shells is the fantasy, a bland concoction made to suit the humans. Dr. Nostril says there's no way we can ever tell for sure, that it's just one of those things about the universe Ikes weren't meant to know.

At least I knew where I was going. Danny had made it that one easy on me; the plume of black smoke rising from the crash site must have been visible from halfway across the store. I felt a twinge of worry in my chest. It was probably nothing. Danny had been in worse crashes and barely been scratched. Still, you never knew what might happen.

Another twinge, this in my stomach, reminded me that I hadn't gotten to eat any of that ice cream.

_You can do it, Sunshine,_ I told myself firmly. _You can get to Danny, make sure he's all right, and get back way before that stuff melts. All you've gotta do is pick up the pace._

I felt something else then; a wave of cold dread. Something was wrong, very wrong. Why did I feel this way? Dex was right, Danny probably wasn't in any danger. He _did_ crash all the time; checking on him was more a matter of politeness that necessity.

Something lurched in my chest. That's when I knew.

My _product_.

Something was happening to my product, something bad, and it was happening right now. I'd never felt anything like it before, and yet it was as crystal clear and straightforward as the nutritional information on the the side of the box. My Ike brain knew instinctually that there was a problem.

I looked over at the smoke and bit my lip. "I'm sorry, Danny," I whispered. And I turned to run. By the time I reached the aisle where my raisins were kept, I was nearly in a blind panic, my heart beating wildly.

I was so desperate, I almost ran smack into Mr. Leonard's shoe. I hurriedly backed away. The old manager was standing in front of my shelf, taking down boxes and loading them onto a cart. I hadn't even realized he was still in the store-it was almost one in the morning! He must have been in his office, on the computer.

It didn't make any sense. This was the threat that had set alarm bells ringing in my head? Usually it felt _good_ when people took my raisins off the shelf. And Mr. Leonard was a sweet old man. He wouldn't even harm a fly, unless it happened to land on his produce.

So why did I feel like I was going to be sick? Why were my ears drooping and my palms sweaty?

He took down another box and cradled it gently in his hands. I heard him mutter something in his deep, human voice and pricked up my ears.

"Poor Sunshine," he said sadly. "I'll miss seeing your face smiling down at me from the shelf, and the thought of all those lovely raisins going to waste just about breaks this old heart in two. But a recall is a recall, I suppose, and..."

I didn't hear the rest. The world seemed to fade away, and all there was was me and Mr. Leonard and _that word_.

_Recall_.

For Ikes, it's a death sentence.

But it wasn't real. It couldn't be, I told myself, pacing back and forth on the grass. Obviously it was a mistake-a really stupid mistake. I wasn't dangerous. I was _good_ for you! I was full of iron, for crying out loud!

Mr. Leonard loaded the last box on the cart and began wheeling it towards the back.

"Well, I'm not going," I said to myself, crossing my arms. "Jeepers, this is just silly! He'll figure it out soon enough and put me back on the shelf. I'm going to check on Danny, now. Who knows what kind of trouble-"

The words died in my throat as I turned. The beautiful grassy park was gone, pulled right out from under my feet. The quaint old apartments where my neighbors lived had turned into hard steel shelves.

"Hello?" I called up to what I thought had been the apartment next to mine. "Mr. Peanut? Shelly? Anyone?"

There was no answer. There was nobody there-just canisters of nuts standing on the shelf in a silent line.

Above me, the sun went out.

Was this reality? Was this was Marketropolis really looked like, behind the grand, shared illusion? Vast multitiered metal walls and a few ugly, flickering lights far above?

It didn't matter. It was _my_ reality now. I always wondered why Ikes left without a fuss when they were recalled, and now I knew. If I stayed, I would be a ghost.

I thought about Dex, sitting there, waiting for someone who would never come back. He wouldn't eat without me; he was too old-fashioned for that. A real gentlemen. He would just keep waiting. And the ice cream would melt.

For some reason it was that image, that mental picture of poor Dex all dolled up in his formal tuxedo sitting in front of a tureen of liquid ice cream, that set me off. Tears rolling down my face, I trudged through the dark, empty store. I wrapped myself in my arms. It was cold without the sun.

_If you just try your best_, I reminded myself, _then it'll always work out. _

I said it over and over again, like a mantra, until by the time I climbed into the crate of Sunshine Goodness raisins in the back office and curled up on top of a box with my own face on it, I almost believed it.


	2. Charm

I cried myself to sleep that night and woke up-later. I wasn't sure if it was day or night, but I was freezing. I huddled up, shuddering and wishing my skirt had been designed to be just a _little_ longer. Now I knew how Polar must have felt.

Polar. We hadn't been close, but there was one more person I'd never see again. How many of these little stabs of realization would I have to go through?

I could hear voices from outside the crate, jabbering excitedly. Not the big, booming voices of humans-Ike voices. In fact, I could almost match a face to one of them... a big, smiling, toothy face wreathed in traffic-cone-orange hair. I reached up and squeezed myself between the wooden slats.

"Lepry?" I began excitedly. I remembered Lepry the Leprechaun-of Lepry's Corn Flakes-from some of Dan's house parties over in the cereal district.

He turned to face me-or rather, _they_ turned. There were at least twenty of them, seated in a loose circle on top of a cardboard box.

They stared at me for a long moment, a sea of identical faces. Then, as one, they broke out in broad grins. The nearest one stood up, walked to the edge of the box, and bowed.

"Sure an' it's nice ta be meetin' such a lovely young lady as yourself, Miss," he said theatrically. "Lepry's me name, an' it's at your service I be!"

"I'm Sunshine-" I began, but now all the Leprys were standing up and introducing themselves and bobbling up and down, each trying to be more polite and charming than the next.

"_I'm Sunshine Goodness!_" I repeated a little too loudly, feeling silly about having to bellow it. "_It's very nice to meet you!_"

"Sunshine!" the first Lepry said. "A prettier name there never was, nor a prettier Ike, neither, I'll wager. But where are all your sisters?"

"It's-it's just me." I sat down on the edge of the crate. "To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure where I'm going. Are we on a truck?"

"On a truck-on a truck?" one of the Lepries sputtered. "'Ye daft girl, we're on a plane! In the cargo hold! An' twenty thousand feet above the Gulf o' Mexico, more or less!"

"You mind ye watch your mouth around a lady," another put in. "Sure an' she's been sawin' logs the whole time, or didn't ye see 'em carrying in that crate?" He turned to me. "We're on our way to Brazil!"

"_Brazil?_" I blinked. "Like the nuts?"

"Like just about the party capitol of the world! We're exports, me girl! World travelers!"

"Far a-roamed from the bonnie fields of Ireland!" put in another Lepry.

"Or the General Mills plant in Iowa, as the case may be," piped up a third.

"Odd it is that there's only one of you," the first observed. "Maybe they're only trying one store-a trial run."

"Maybe," I mumbled. It would be too humiliating to let them know I'd been recalled.

"Ah, but it's sure I am that they'll love you!" said one of the Leprys. I don't know if he'd talked before; I was having a hard time keeping them all straight. "They say Brazilian Ikes are beauties, 'tis true, but surely none could match your radiance."

"But there are more of them," another Lepry said gleefully, nudging his brother.

The Leprys began talking excitedly among themselves about everything they planned to do once they were unloaded and distributed to their separate stores. Apparently Brazilian supermarkets could get pretty wild; to hear them talk, it was Carnival in the aisles every night.

I slipped back into my crate, feeling a tightness in my throat and wondering if I was going to start crying again.

_It'll turn out_, I repeated to myself. _It'll all turn out fine_.

It was hard to see how, though. I listened to the Leprys, chattering away happily, heading off to their spots on the shelves without a care in the world. I felt...strange. Envious. I wasn't supposed to feel that way-it wasn't very Good-but I did all the same.

Some time later, I was huddled up against one of my boxes when I heard a soft knock on the slats of the crate.

"Yes?"

"Beggin' your pardon, Miss-sure an' I don't want to intrude on yer personal space-"

"It's okay. Come on in."

One of the Leprys slipped into the crate, huffing and puffing as he squeezed through the crack. They're portly little guys.

"It's just," he said nervously, removing his hat. "I wanted to ask you something."

_I'm flattered, but I already have a boyfriend_, I almost said automatically. And then the realization that I _didn't_, not anymore, not really, hit me with a fresh wave of pain.

"Ask away," I said, because I had to say something or I would have broken down again.

"It's just that, me brothers an' I ... you're the first other Ike we've ever seen. An'... an' it's not that I don't want to get out there an' get on the shelf." He gulped. "But...what's it like? Bein' on your own, I mean?"

He looked so sorrowful, standing there, fiddling his hat into a crushed wad of green felt. I remembered sitting in the back of a delivery truck with my sisters, pulling up to store after store, never knowing when it would be our turn to be torn away from the only people we'd ever known and forced out on the shelves. I was second to the end-I still remember looking back at my last sister standing forlornly in the shadows of the boxes, seeing the look of absolute loneliness and isolation on her face and knowing it was mirrored on mine. But when I got in the store-when I saw Marketopolis for the first time-

"You'll be fine," I told him. "It'll be different, and you'll have to get used to a lot of new things, but-but you'll be the life of the party."

"Ye really think so?"

"I just have this feeling." Plus, I'd seen him, or our version of him, dancing in the punchbowl with a lady Ike on each arm.

"Well...well, thanks." He bowed. "An'-if ye'll pardon me for saying so-I can see yeh're a bit worried as well, and I just want to say-ye don't need to be, either. The customers are going to love ye, I'd bet me marshmallows on it."

I forced a smile onto my face. "Thank you. That means a lot to me."

Then he left, and I spend the rest of the plane ride thinking thoughts that weren't very Good at all.


End file.
